Author: jadenmc

howdy friends,

so it’s been awhile. i have um missed the last post(s?) but i am here and were gonna make it a better habit to complete these deadlines.

anyways so i guess this post will be a bit of an update since i haven’t written since winter quarter.

so winter quarter is over and idk everything feels um weird. now that i am reflecting over winter quarter, i am realizing how much i didn’t like it. i was taking a lot of my ge’s since i couldnt get a lot of the classes i wanted and i hadn’t declared yet. but now were in spring quarter and a lot has happened.

firstly, i declared! i am officially an english major! that said, i still didn’t get any of the classes i wanted el oh el but its fine. this quarter’s classes are WAY better. school work doesnt feel like work if you enjoy what youre learning so the classes i have now are a bit more fun.

last quarter i had to do TWO ge ii (science and tech) classes and as a humanities major, it was absolutely horrible. i took ess21? the one with the glaciers. the professor was cool but the class was suepr annoying even though i didnt go to lectures. i mean i got a B, (it wouldve been an A if i joined the discord apparently but yk me, didnt make friends or go to lecture). and i took bme3 which was fine and pretty easy. but yk what, now that i am taking classes that i actually like, i think i prefer to do work and enjoy it vs not enjoy work and not do it.

this quarter i am taking fun humanities courses. one of the classes i am taking fms101b, a film class based on the studio era (1990s) so a lot of black and white film. but what is really interesting is the courses’ alignment with actual socio-political problems of the time. a lot of what were talking about in class right now is how the studio era is relevant to black civil rights issues. so in all, its not exactly what i signed up for but regardless, i still think its interesting.

ill be quick with the others because they all lie in the same areas. other than film, i am taking society and law (english 11) which is basically ap gov but its cool because i liked ap gov but idk it wasnt what i was looking for. i thought i would be like analyzing like actual literature. eng 11 is literally just a government class and no literature at all ;(.

my third class is asianamerican studies 53. the class is alright. the professor is very smart but shes also very scary. i think her name is claire wong or something? the topic is really interesting though. we are going through asian american presence in us history and how it aligns with black civil rights; because, as i have learned, they are very interconnected. the class is also super socio political so its cool. who knew that by taking all of these humanities courses, i was actually going to learn be taking a social science classes?

and then lastly philo 4 which is chill. everything is basically online except for discussion but i mean i find the topic of ethics really interesting so i am applying to my life. so all in all, classes are really fun.

other than classes, i got a job! i am actually “working” right now but we did everything were supposed to do so i am just kind of sitting here. but for legal purposes i am working right now but uh yeah i am just hanging out until 12:30 so i can go back to the dorm. i will actually probably go grab some food. tonight is the first night that i dont have dance practice since winter quarter.

ever since i have gone back to school from winter break, i haven’t had a single night to myself. which i know by how i am describing it, sounds pretty bad but…yk what no yeah it has been horrible (maybe thats an exaggeration) but it hasnt been fun.

my dance team has had “hell week” ever since we have gotten back to school. i literally flew back from sacramento and ubered straight to practice so i could get placed in a piece i wanted to be in. oh hell week btw is just when you have practice everyday. our hell week was for eleven days so practice everynight for eleven days.

and okay maybe you’ll say that thats not horrible but let me tell you, our practices dont go from like eight to ten. im talking eight to like three if we’re lucky. in the last few days of hell week, we had a: 3 pm to 3 am (saturday) and the worst? 8 pm to 6 am. its less than saturdays but the thing is, it was a monday night to a tuesday morning.

AND i had work at 6:30. so i literally ended practice at 6 am, hustled my ass back to my dorm, took a shower, got dressed for work and ran to student center. WITH NO SLEEP. and the night before we had practice late as well so i was on like seven hours for two days. AND THEN i had class. okay i am complaining forgive but i am enjoying dancing a lot. i am learning a lot and improving a lot so thats whats great.

i am having a good time usually so it isnt that bad. most of the time im not actually dancing, i just have to be there in case they need me or something. usually i just do homework or listen to music or practice. its just hard because i wanted to be more consistent with my sleep schedule this quarter sooooo, so far not so great.

also i miss my family. to be frank with you guys, i am so thinking about transferring back to a school at home just because i think socal isnt really for me. maybe ill explain more indepth later. but i mean im keeping my hopes up for uci. so hopefully this quarter and next year will change my mind. i really miss my family. and my house. and my dog. and my mom. and my dad. and my car. ;(. but i mean this quarter has been more fun than fall and winter so yeah im keeping my hopes up.

anwyays thats some of my update. i think that was really long but whatevs.

also ima take this chance to promote some albums i have been listening to. eveyrthing is so random el oh el but here we goooo:

portals by melanie martinez (i think its a phase but idc i like it the album is creepy and weird and pretty good). some songs:

• tunnel vision
• void
• death
• light shower
• the contortionist

never enough by daniel caesar (okay i have barely listened to it but i like some songs so yeah i am listening to it now just so i dont feel like a fraud or a fake). here are some songs i like:

• always
• toronto 2014
• dissillusionment
• ocho rios
• homiesexual

okay that is it. good byeeeeeeeeeeeee

– jaden

intro to me and my camcorder

so, i have some exciting news. okay well not really but it’s exciting to me.

i recently obtained an old digital camcorder that my parents used in the early 2000s. its a camera that i know my parents recorded a lot of my baby moments in and so i had my dad bring it to my roommates family (who was visiting uci) so that i could play around with it. i have always wanted to get into video making and film-directing sorts so i was pretty excited to get it last friday.

what is a camcorder

i am supposed to elaborate but i don’t know how much more i could explain it. i think its sony something? i am not really sure but anyways, imagine an old school camera with its signature opening tab viewer thingie that ur dad probably has somewhere in a drawer. that’s what my camcorder is. it’s also black. and i love it because it really has so much history built into it inherently; it is literally a part of my history, something that existed as a part of my childhood. and as a result, it has that vintage, grainy look to it but not one that is engineered to pretend to be history, it is what modern tech looked like when i was growing up. if you want to see it, its on my instagram and maybe what i am saying will make a little more sense. anyways, as u can tell i think its pretty cool.

i dont think i need to explain how recording things work to our generation so i wont but what i will explain, ironically, is the parts of the old tech that you might not imagine. firstly, my favorite, it has a zoom function. on the base of the camera, there’s a little knob that zoooms in or zoooms out and i think it is the coolest thing ever. something i remember very specifically about film 85a is something my professor said about the zoom function. while we can perform typical camera functions like a dolly, which is just when a camera comes closer to the subject, our human eyes cannot zoom. our eyes cannot use distance to focus on something; it’s a manmade function. and today, the notorious zoom has fallen out of contemporary filmmaking while it’s prevalence stays in the glamor of the 80’s and 90’s.

to add to that, the quality of the camera itself isn’t particularly good. it has that vintage tint to it. you know, slightly undersaturated, super grainy, but these aspects are exactly why i like it. it’s like time traveling and now i get to participate in an era where camcorders really were the only option.

camcorder adventures

so what did i do with my fancy new toy. well the same day that i got it, my friend was visiting from ucla. shes a very close friend of mine and we have been friends for a very long time. she’s also one of the few people that i really trust and i would say we have a very intimate friendship. since she was visiting for the first time, me and the third member of our little trio had made plans for an eventful weekend. and though i we did have a lot of fun, most of my camcorder minutes were just of us being stupid in my dorm. my roommate was there too and it was fun. i think they got annoyed at me but i idk it felt necessary to quietly film my closest friends. i really wanted to embody what it was the camcorder stood for; captivated memories of a good time. i wanted to record the same way my parents wanted to remember me as a kid, careful not to miss anything so that, in thirty years, i can remember what life was like when i was younger. i really did record intending to hurt adult me with my own nostalgia. i hope that was an adequate explanation but anyways.

i think, other than random dorm things, i have a lot of footage of us just walking. just walking. on campus, in buildings. at the beach, in the sand, a golden hood over 4 p.m. skin. a lot of the footage i know will be beautiful. not because i only recorded my camera only when it was beautiful, bellieve me most of it was the most menial of things, but because it was the truth of what my life was that weekend. most of it just happened to have its own beauty. maybe 4 people on a rug watching a bad movie and falling asleep isnt the most conventionally attractive, but the honesty in the video as a depiction of that eventful saturday is beautiful in the same way we need to love the menial things. to find beauty in them. and i would show you but i haven’t figured out how to upload or even look over the footage yet. i need a cord or something. i dont know ill have to run to target later and figure it out.

camcorders in film and other things

in this last section, we will look at the old-school camera look in films. well only one film i think. and one of my friends own vlog that she recorded on her own digital recorder.

our first example is:

Aftersun (2022)

conveniently, this film was recommended to me by the same friend who made the video that i just talked about. i think i owe some of my own inspiration to this friend as well. i find her artistic creations to be so beautiful. she does a great job and she also inspires me through her photography. yeah shes pretty great.

anyways, the film.

Aftersun (2022) is a film about nostalgia and fatherhood. of the first things i love about the film is it’s cinematography and, above that, the actor playing the father, paul mescal’s, does a perfect embodiment of a father trying his best. so if u get a chance, it is definitely a performance worth watching.

what’s also enticing is the medium in which the movie was made: the film combines the contemporary videography with camcorder footage that our main characters, sophie and calum, switch between. and together with anti-chronological editing, the movie portrays snippets of sophie’s current life, her memories, and the camcorder to piece together a puzzle of her father. but i would like to note that our questions as the audience do not allude to just a simple who or what or why it is that everything is the way it is. in the contrary, the entirety of the mystery is just of her father, a puzzle that that even the audience sees is completely fragmented in the same way that sophie herself understands it. and this message is geniusly encoded in random ins and outs of scenes and blanks in the story itself.

the camcorder’s presence, in my opinion, was terrific because it seamlessly creates nostalgic illusions that the film elegantly dance through. so yeah again, if you get a chance, you should definitely see the film. perhaps the plot itself isn’t exactly the most eye-catchingly enticing but trust me, it gets there. and even if it doesn’t, i assure you that the production of the movie certainly is.

secondly:

my friends little montage thingie of our senior ball. i remember her trailing us as we were going about our festivities and now i am grateful i have something that i can remember the time with. when i watch it, it definitely gives me a rollercoaster back to last april. and although it might not for you, i hope you kind of get a gist of what diving into tools of the past does. and while you’re here, go check out her page i think her photography account is pretty cool and im sure you will agree that she is incredibly talented.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/Cc1a8lQp0wY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

i hope you enjoyed today’s incredibly looong post. i did but now i am tired of writing so i will just leave this here.

goodbye for now

sincerely,

jaden

Howdy,

Yay winter quarter. I mean it with zero enthusiasm, truly. One thing I have decided recently, after a spectacular winter break, is that I have been lying to myself. I do not like school. It sucks. I mean yeah who does but like I literally don’t want to do anything but read (I read this fantastic novel over the winter and the writing was just so phenomenal but I will get to that later). Like seriously, I am so ready to retire. I cannot wait for my life in thirty years when I am a super successful author (journalist? english teacher? magazine editor? super star celebrity? You see, as much as I have changed in the past few months, being undeclared is, it seems, still a major problem) and I can do whatever I want with my time and not have to think about money or, I don’t know, arbitrary obligations like school.

But enough rambling, I am supposed to reflect on the last quarter which, I kind-of don’t want to do but a prompts a prompt.

Well, academic-wise, I learned that, as an undeclared first-year looking into humanities, I can really kind of just try my best and still be successful. I have talked about this before I think but I took Writing 60 with Professor Ryan Chang and gosh, the class was so fun. As an intense writing course prioritizing research writing, I had to dive into professional academic writing and it turned out to be (to my surprise) a really enjoyable experience. The biggest thing that I learned from the course, though, was the strangeness of my work-ethic. You see, when it comes to writing, I really do not write unless it feels right. And I don’t really know to how to describe it to you, my dear reader, other than sometimes, I imagine writing my papers and feel dread and sometimes I feel excited; so I decided that I will write when whatever task I was supposed to do came easily. Same goes with most other things now. Of my obligations, it either gets done naturally and painlessly, or it won’t get done until then. So, my inconsistent work-ethic, and it’s exhilarating dangers is, of one of my recent self-discoveries.

Socially, I have more interesting things to talk about. I have honestly had a lot of trouble making friends and engaging in the community here. Back at home in the good ol’ Elk Grove, I was myself, comfortable and confident. But here, I was faced with a new environment, far far away from the luxuries of my family, close friends and most heart-wrenchingly, my 2009 Honda Accord that is so ever representative as a symbol of my adult freedom. So being a student here has been particularly rough on my social life. I had to learn to function around other people when I really didn’t who I was. Around these new Southern Californian plebeians, I was more anxious and more often than not, uncomfortable, insecure, and afraid of being myself. And even now, I am still working on this anxiety. It has been, believe me, very difficult but I know I am getting closer and closer to finding my confidence back.

On a more positive note, I am very proud of the past quarter actually. I have really put myself out there and, at times, a little too much. Sometimes, mostly in social situations, I would push past my discomfort in order to, you know, seize the moment, seize the day. But sometimes, personal growth and becoming a better human being has to take a backseat to how I am feeling. Sometimes, I don’t want to do things because I just don’t feel like it. Sometimes, I am tired and I don’t want to go to a team hang-out or study together or go and do a lot of methamphetamine (a joke). So, in a self-care moment, I have learned to protect my energy better. But my carpe diem adventures haven’t all been that bad. I have a few friends that I wouldn’t have talked to or wouldn’t have met if I let my anxiety stop me. And, I wouldn’t be on the amazing dance team that I am on if I had let my self-doubt win. So yay me! I hope you are “yay-ing” yourself too for your hard work over these past few months as well. And a quick warning, there is an incoming affirmation: I also hope you are remembering to be kind to yourself on this journey and that you are trying your best. I am practicing reminding myself that too: that I am trying my best, and it really is enough.

Anywho I shall be back to write my book review so look forward to part two of this when I abuse my Zot-Blog privileges to promote the superb literary prose in the novel “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara. So until then,

Toodles,

Jaden Chung

So I am apart of a dance crew: CADC or the Chinese Association Dance Crew and we are a competitive team. But like the name suggests, we are also a branch of the Chinese Association and as a branch, all of the dance team members have to be apart of the club. And I say “have to” because I did not want to be part of the Chinese Association itself because it meant club responsibilities and fams and the usual club stuff.

So as you can probably tell, I did not exactly approach my membership with overwhelming ecstaticness. My responsibilities became real in a few weeks after I joined the team. At the end of October-ish, my dance crew cabinet members required us to attend a Chinese Association event in support of the organization and I don’t even remember what we called it. I only remember hearing that it was “mandatory” and at that word, I was already dreading my attendance and drafting a super creative and undeniable excuse just so I could skip the event.

A week later, the sports day thing (which I later found out was called “CA Constituency” or something like that) was coming up and, despite my efforts, I did not have a super creative and grand masterplan to get out of it. The night before was also a beach bonfire with my actual team members (whom I adore) so I decided that I might as well just see how I feel and decide if I should just, I don’t know, call in sick. But I attended the bonfire and it turned out to be pretty fun and so I found myself looking forward to seeing my team again the next day.

So fast forward to the actual event, I put on a cute outfit and grabbed my book and a blanket (I knew it was at a park and I figured if I anything I’ll just break my ankle or something and just read and have a pretty, aesthetic afternoon). But when I got there and the games actually started, I found myself having a lot of fun. Like a lot of fun. We played a group game where we had to sing songs as a group on the spot based on a theme and I confidently carried my team with some other of my friends. I didn’t realize I had such a competitive side to me and it was exhilarating just screaming out of adrenaline. We played some other games too like charades telephones, which is exactly what it sounds like, and some relay race thing .

Overall it was a really fun time and we got free pizza at the end so I was pretty content. I guess the moral of the story is that being closed minded is for losers. Okay that might be too rough but I am sure you get the point. What I mean is that we, and when I say “we” I mean “I”, need to be more open to new experiences and new things. My initial dread became a feeling of gratefulness; a feeling that transformed when I looked back to what a good time I had. So yay to new college experiences! I will be sure to add this to my life lessons list and I am glad it contributed to my growth. From now on I will be sure to be more open minded and more willing.

For this post’s song which is just whatever song I am feeling in the moment that I am typing…

It’s: “PSA” by SZA which is technically still unreleased. I was just listening to SZA for like the entirety of my afternoon and it was such a good vibe. I am so excited for her album oh my lord finally after 5 years a new album. So yeah go listen to it if you like RNB and even if you don’t; it is just a really sick song.

Okay bye.

Callabunga,

jaden chung

Just kidding. I am chillin like a villain. So far I have only had a single midterm so to be fair, I can’t really say much.

The one midterm I did have was for Film and Media 85a and it was basically just memorizing key terms and concepts. I just completed it a few hours ago and although it ended up being pretty easy, I still had high expectations for my very first, big adult, college midterm exam.

You see, at my high school, midterms were a big deal. Like a really big deal. In fact, we didn’t even use the word “midterm”, we just treated the exams as finals and the school did too. Midterm days were designated with minimum days so it was basically just a final for the end of each quarter. So when I walked into HIB 100 on this particular Wednesday, I thought it would be a little more, well for the lack of a better word, serious. I don’t know I thought maybe that there would be TA’s guarding the doors to collect phones or at least some type of the usual “plagiarism lecture” before we started. But no, I basically walked in and sat at my usual spot and waited for instructions. And eventually the exams started in my usual lecture spot with my usual lecture side desk thing.

At the end of the day, I was wrong but hey I’ll take casual and wrong over serious and right at the end of the day.

And if anything, it was a good study experience for me. I had kind of slacked off for the course so I crammed the night before. Yes, I procrastinated but, personally, I think it was still a very productive and effective cram session. I started studying around 12 a.m. which probably isn’t exactly healthy but besides that, I kind of just jumped straight into the zone. I stayed focus and concocted a study strategy on the spot. Everything felt really natural and I think I did a good job in the end.

What is this super effective and original study strategy you might ask? Well that’s a secret I’ll never share.

Just kidding again. It isn’t super secret and it certainly isn’t original. I just compiled all the important information from my notes and re-wrote it on a google doc. It’s sort of a last-minute study guide–and I think it definitely worked. It allowed me to, one, go over the information in my notes and allowed me to process it as I was rewriting everything. I like it because while studying and going over terms and concepts are important, it also leaves you with an actual cheat sheet at the end. Shout out to my AP Government Teacher for forcing me to do that for homework so I could discover how effective it was for me.

While my very first mid-term was pretty rad (I am not using rad unironically; I just think rad is a rad word and I am trying to bring it back), I have another one (an in class midterm and a take-home essay) for English on Tuesday but to be frank, I am not letting it bother me. I am keeping my peace, kind of, so go me.

Before I finish, I am going to tell you my song of the week/day/songIamcurrentlyfeelingasIwritethis. And for this post its:

“Afterglow” by Taylor Swift wooohooooo!

I was listening to it during my study break and gosh it literally just released all of my negative energy. #sograteful #becomingaswiftie

That concludes post numero tres. I hope you all are doing well. I am I think–trying to anyways and I am being positive about it. Until the next post, see you soooooooon.

P.S. I am learning to add photos to my blogs. I just uhh, don’t know how err, I do but I am lazy to transport my photos from my phone. So until I find an easier way to do it without having to type my entries on my phone, it will stay pictureless. No that’s a lie I have too many good photos not to post so I think next week’s will have photos but no promises.

With love,

jaden.